Tri-Cap

Contributed by Yoni Goldstein. [Since I have been unable to contact the inventor to ask questions, I have supplied some missing rules to fill gaps in his description. These are in italics and square brackets. JM]

Use a standard deck of 52 cards without jokers. Cards rank K-Q-J-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2. Aces are wild and suits are irrelevant.

The goal of the game is to "capture" the majority of cards in the deck.

The game starts by dealing each player 3 cards to hold. At the beginning of every round each player lays out one of his/her cards face down. When all players have put out a card, the cards are flipped over. These are the players' active cards. A card is dealt face up into the center of the table, and the cards are inspected to see whether anyone's face up card is adjacent to (1 rank away from) the center card). Aces are wild, and therefore adjacent to every card. For example if the center card is a 10, anyone who has a 9, J or Ace has an adjacent card. There are three possibilities:

1. No one has an adjacent card. In this case a new card from the deck is flipped face up on top of the centre card, and this is repeated until someone has an adjacent card.
2. One player has an adjacent card. This player may take the card or cards the middle and put them, together with their active card, face down in their "Captured Pile". The player who made the capture must then put out a new active card to replace the one that made the capture. Alternatively the player may pass the opportunity to take the pile, and a new card is flipped as in #1 above.
3. More than one player has an adjacent card. This is called a Tricap. All players discard the cards from their hand and their active cards and these are shuffled with the deck to form a new deck. [The center card and any cards under it remain in place.] Everyone is dealt three new cards and after they have selected their new active card a new center card is flipped from the deck face up on top of the old center card.

When you run out of your 3 cards, having played your last card as an active card, take 3 more from the top of the stock. [Suggestion: it's best if players wait to do this until the next time they need to replace their active card. That way the game can continue a little longer if there are only 3 or fewer cards left in the deck.]

Since Aces are adjacent to every card, if an Ace is drawn as the centercard, there is an automatic Tricap.

[The game ends when the deck runs out. This may happen after a Tricap if there are not enough cards to deal three to everyone, or when there is no card to turn over as a new centercard, or when a player needs to draw cards and fewer than three remain.]